Ok, contrary to popular belief, managing stressful situations isn’t necessarily about finding your happy place.  While it may work for some,  I’m sure many other individuals find it challenging to focus at all during a very intensely stressful situations, much less imagining some warm tropical beach with the ocean breeze and waves crashing on the shore.  Mental imagery is a good place to start to manage stress.  Here are a couple more ideas that might be able to help you de-stress.  

Awareness and making stress management a priority.  

One of the most important things you can do for stress management is simply becoming more aware of it and making it 1st on your “to do” list, or at least one of the top 5.  Stop letting other things get in the way.  Stress wears you down mentally, physically, and emotionally.  It makes us unhealthy and we tend to make unhealthy choices when under stress or duress.   “I just don’t have time.”, you say.  “I can’t focus on that right now.”  “There are other things that demand too much of my attention.”  

Our capacity for critical thinking, making good choices, emotional regulation, quality of relationships; these all tend to improve when we are managing stress effectively.   Let’s do a little mental exercise to illustrate how elusive our awareness of stress can be.  Do you remember the last time you took a long vacation?  Half way through, you came to the realization you have felt more relaxed than you have in a long time.  Do you remember saying to yourself at the end of your vacation, “Wow, I was just starting to unwind and now that I’m fully relaxed, I have to go back to work tomorrow!”?    For some, it takes a long time for the more immediate effects of stress to leave them.  For many, the absence of whatever is causing their stress is the only indicator in their conscious awareness that they were as uncomfortable as they were.  

There are many different ways to bring more awareness of what might be troubling you.  In my  experience creating quiet time, or placing yourself in  an environment with less stimulation for a period of time allows you to organize your thoughts and to think more clearly and relax.  Its also a very good way for you to take inventory of the things in your life that may be causing you more harm than good.   Meditation is touted by many as a way of being able to focus your concentration and generate better awareness of yourself.  For those of you who may be interested go to this Meditation link to learn more about it.  Make a commitment now to do something about how you manage stress.


Recognizing and modifying automatic thoughts

A great deal of stress can come from our own perceptions.  One of my favorite sayings is “Life is 10% what happens to you, and 90% of how you react to it."   Our own perceptions greatly determine our behavior and how we react to situations.  In turn, our perceptions are influenced by how we talk to ourselves; the internal monologue that goes on in our head every day.  These are called automatic thoughts.   The problem with automatic thoughts is that we rarely are aware that they are happening.

Being able to recognize automatic thoughts is the first step to modifying how you manage and respond to them. For example, let’s say someone close to you makes a comment that triggers an emotion and a reaction. Possible automatic thoughts could be “She doesn’t care about me.” or “He’s trying to get on my last nerve!”  This may lead to feelings of anger, resentment, or sadness.  These feelings then shape how you may react to the comment:  a reciprocal nasty comment of your own, a passive-aggressive approach of ignoring the person and thereby punishing them for their moment of indiscretion, or blaming the person as a whole for being “stupid”, or rejecting them outright.  Another example would be getting a less desirable grade on a paper or an unfavorable review on a project at work.  You might say to yourself, “I’m a failure.”  With that simple statement, you tend to judge and label yourself based on one experience, the other successes you might had the rest of the day.    The key to identifying and modifying automatic thoughts is to examine possible alternatives to the thoughts.  “What evidence do I have to think this way?”  “What are other possibilities?”  (besides taking it personally )  “Is this a fact or an opinion?” ”  “Is there an alternative explanation” “If I believe the automatic thought, how does it affect me?”  And most importantly, “What would be the result if I modified my thinking?”  “What should I do about it?”  


Exploring alternative explanations to what we think when faced with a stressful situation is the first step to changing our perceptions, how our thoughts affect our feelings, and subsequently how it affects our behavior and mental health.   Keeping a daily journal of your thoughts and experiences is also a very good conscious-raising way of identifying and modifying harmful or distorted thinking.  


It has been my experience in working with others over many years in the mental health field that stress and how to manage it is more than what happens to us, it also involves our perceptions, how we organize our thoughts, and the internal mental discussion we have with ourselves that determines our mood for that moment or that day.  I hope you found this information helpful.   In the coming weeks, I will be discussing more mental exercises to help with stress management as well as tools one can use to think more clearly and feel and be more positive in general.  Thanks for reading.  Please feel free to share your thoughts on how you manage stress.




As the people at Walgreens always say to me now when I am checking out, “Be Well!”

I recently read an article that reached me both on a personal and professional level.  The article can be found on the Business Insider website if you go to Why Americans Are Stressed Out at Work.   In the news article, it reported a statistic from the American Psychological Association that more than 8 in 10 Americans are “stressed out” by their jobs.  If this statistic is even close to being true, that’s a staggering figure!

The article goes on to discuss some of the top reasons why people are stressed at work:

• low pay
  
  
• increase workload
  
  
• work-place bullying
  
  
• long commutes
  
  

How stress affects us:

• physical health
  
  
• mental health
  
  
• increased social isolation
  
  
• conflict with family /spouse / friends
  
  

Physical manifestations of stress:

• headaches
  
  
• appetite fluctuations
  
  
• fatigue
  
  
• muscle tension
  
  
• upset stomach
  
  
• change in sex drive
  
  
• teeth grinding
  
  

Release of Stress Hormones that impact our general physical health

• There are three stress hormones,  adrenaline,  cortisol and norepinephrine, that are responsible for our fight/flight/freeze response when faced with a perceived threat.  These hormones play a critical function at appropriate times and are released into the bloodstream to increase our heart rate and energy level.  However, if these hormones are present over long and chronic periods of time, the potential for hypertension and cardiovascular disease increases.  The damaging effects to  the heart and cardiovascular system are increased even more when you consider that many people respond to stress by smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol, both of which have been shown to have significant negative health implications. Stress even interferes with our immune system making us more susceptible to illness and disease.  
  
  

Recognizing Stress in the Workplace

• Irritability
  
  
• Lack of interest in work
  
  
• Feeling overwhelmed
  
  
• Perceived lack of control over workload
  
  
• Avoiding peers or supervisors
  
  
• Anxiety and/or depression
  
  

What you can do to manage stress in the workplace

• Evaluate your career goals in relation to where you are in your current job.  Do they match?  Do you enjoy what you do?  Do you believe you are fairly compensated for what you do?  Are you able to take reasonable time off for family, leisure, vacation?  The answers to these questions can help guide you to decisions that may help you with managing work related stress.  
  
  
• Take care of yourself.  If you haven’t done so already, please read my blog on 10 Things You Can Do (right now) to Maintain Good Mental Health
  
  
• Take your lunch break
  
  
• Avoid over committing yourself.  Be realistic about what you can accomplish in the time allotted for work.  When you can, delegate or ask for assistance with large projects.  

• Take large projects and break them down into smaller manageable steps to help with a sense of progress and completion. 

• Think before you act.  Avoid those impulsive, in-the-heat-of-the-moment knee-jerk reactions to demands, ultimatums, or stressful situations.  Take a day or two if necessary.  Talk with a peer or supervisor before saying or doing something that might have long term career implications.  

• Reward yourself for a job well done.  Take the time to recognize your own accomplishments and take pride in your work.  It can go a long way in improving a negative disposition in the workplace.  

While many would agree that their work environment is stressful, it certainly isn't the only thing that is stressful in our lives;  financial obligations, work/family balance, increasing and competing demands on our time, relationship difficulties, and personal loss are just a few things that are challenging to many.  

The way one responds to stress varies widely from individual to individual. Let’s face it, stress is inevitable.  Everybody experiences it.  I can recall many times in recent memory where I've had to step outside myself and think, “You really could have handled that better than you did.”  Sometimes we aren't even aware that we are stressed.   In these instances it usually takes someone close to us may bring it to our awareness. .  Even then,  often enough pretend that everything is “fine”, that we aren't troubled, and that if we just “push through”, the troubling situation will eventually pass.  We often become very good at this and the stress, which really hasn't gone away by the way, becomes something that we get used to and ignore.  Yet the body is aware, and frequently lets us know.  We simply dismiss those sleepless nights, worrying and ruminating thoughts, frequent headaches, fatigue, and muscle cramps and chalk it up to, “that’s just the way it is right now,”  & “it will pass.”  

While we all experience stress, there are many individuals who cope well and are successful in learning to adapt and change in response to stressful situations, rather than letting it overtake their lives.   Stress can actually be a good thing in a way in that it can serve as an indicator or alert that something in our immediate environment is not right and change needs to occur.  I believe that the difference for those individuals who are expert stress managers is that they are more self-aware and recognize the healthy changes that need to take place and are able to make these changes as needed.  Furthermore I believe these individuals are able to re-frame a stressful situation and avoid the negative self-talk that is so often the culprit of poor self care and poor choices.  These individuals are better able to take control of a situation rather than letting that situation take control of them.  If you are interested in learning more about individuals who cope well with stress, you can find more information in the article in Psychology Today titled, 10 Traits of Emotionally Resilient People.   


  Check back next week for Part II of Managing Stress